Solon caught the orchid by its stem. He brought it to his chest and patted its petals. “How much time will you buy me?” he asked the flower.
When he looked up at Eureka, an eerie smile haunted his face. “Well, you’re here now, aren’t you? I might as well get used to it. Privacy and dignity are temporary states.”
“Water, water, everyone?” Solon held out a copper carafe when they were back upstairs and dry, seated around his fire. He’d distributed alpaca blankets, which they all wrapped around their shoulders.
Cat flexed her feet in a pair of Solon’s moccasins.
“These things will be the death of me,” she’d told one of the skulls on the wall when she’d slipped off her red stilettos and hooked their heels through its eye sockets. “You feel me, right?”
Dad’s moth-wing bower had begun to sag during Eureka’s adventure with the orchid. The moths were dying. When the bower drooped all the way to the ground it unfurled, looking as magical as a drab gray quilt. As Solon and Ander carried Dad closer to the fire and propped him up on a mountain of pillows, Eureka fingered the bower’s strange material. The moths’ wings were changing, from thin, chalky sheets to dust.
She took the carafe from Solon, aching to down its contents in a few gulps. She held it to her father’s lips.
He drank weakly. His dry throat made scraping noises as he strained to swallow. When he seemed too tired to drink any more he turned his eyes on Eureka. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”
She wiped the corner of his mouth. “We take care of each other.”
He tried to smile. “You look so much like your mother, but …”
“But what?”
Dad rarely brought up Diana. Eureka knew he was tired, but she wanted to stay in the moment, to keep him there with her. She wanted to learn as much as she could about the love that made her.
“But you’re stronger.”
Eureka was amazed. Diana had been the strongest person she knew.
“You aren’t afraid to falter,” Dad said, “or to be around others when they falter. That takes strength that Diana never had.”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” Eureka said.
Dad touched her cheek. “Everybody’s got a choice.”
Solon, who had disappeared behind a hanging rug that must have led to a back room, returned carrying a wooden tray of tall ceramic mugs. “I also have prosecco, if you’d prefer. I do.”
“What’s prospecto?” William asked.
“Do you have popcorn?” Claire asked.
“Look at us”—Solon tossed an empty mug to Cat, who caught it by the handle with her pinky—“having a little party.”
“My dad needs a doctor,” Eureka said.
“Yes, yes,” Solon said. “My assistant should be here presently. She makes the loveliest painkillers.”
“His wound needs redressing, too,” Eureka said. “We need gauze, antiseptic—”
“When Filiz gets here. She handles what I don’t.” Solon reached into his robe pocket and withdrew a hand-rolled cigarette. He put it in his mouth, leaned over the fire, and inhaled. He blew out a great puff of smoke that smelled like cloves. William coughed. Eureka fanned the smoke away from her brother’s face.
“First,” Solon said, “I must know which one of you saw through the witches’ glaze into my cave?”
“Me,” Claire said.
“Should have known,” Solon said. “She’s three foot two and exudes the knowledge that adults are full of crap. Her quirk is still quite strong.”
“What’s a quirk?” Cat asked, but Solon only smiled at Claire.
“Claire is my sister,” Eureka explained. “She and William are twins.”
Solon nodded at William, exhaled out the corner of his mouth to be polite. “What’s your brand of magic?”
“I’m still deciding,” William said. He didn’t mean it as a joke—to William, magic was real.
The lost Seedbearer rested his cigarette on the stalagmite he was using as an ashtray. “I understand.”
Ander picked up the cigarette and sniffed it as if he’d never seen one before. “How can you smoke?”